Last November, Greg Pak, writer for DC Comics’ epic caped-odd-couple series “Batman/Superman,” was listening to a playlist of his old college buddy Jonathan Coulton’s songs, when he noticed something cool.

“I’ve been writing comics for almost a decade now, and so my brain thinks in terms of multiverses by default,” says Pak. “I mean, half my job is trying to make sense of how different characters written by other writers fit together. And I’m listening to Jonathan’s songs, and it suddenly hit me that they kind of fit together in interesting ways.” Specifically, says Pak, a song called “The Future Soon” features a 12 year old kid who’s pining after a girl who doesn’t like him, and imagining a world in which he becomes the master of the universe, with a killer robot army. And another song, “SkullcrusherMountain,” is about a middle-aged supervillain…pining after a woman who doesn’t like him. What if the supervillain was the kid — 30 years later?

“So I did what anyone does these days: I sent Jonathan a tweet.” Read More »

For my costume-required 18th birthday party, I dressed up as my long-time fictional hero, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I donned the prerequisite blonde wig, maroon pleather jacket and accessorized with a wooden stake, er, spatula. I was recognized…by no one.

I look back at the party with a mixture of wounded pride and shame. I suppose I could have dressed up as Chun-Li from Street Fighter or a character from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” like some friends did. But am I only supposed to identify with “Asian” characters because I’m Asian-American? To learn more, I recently sat down with Jeff Yang, editor-in-chief of the graphic novel collection “Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology,” and co-chair of the first-ever Asian American Comicon, an all-day event being held tomorrow at the Museum of Chinese in America.

Like “Secret Identities,” the comic convention will showcase the vast array of Asian and Asian American writers and artists in the comic book industry — GI Joe writer Larry Hama, Wonder Woman artist Bernard Chang, Incredible Hulk writer Greg Pak, etc. — while also engaging in conversations such as the representation — or under representation — of Asians in the stories they largely create. Read More »

Two weeks ago, actress and singer Patti LuPone grabbed a cell phone out of the hand of an audience member who was texting during a performance of her current play, "Shows for Days." The bold move led to an outpouring of support from fans fed up with glowing screens. Ms. LuPone gives us her five rules of theater etiquette.